Foiling upwind isn’t a big deal and may not even be desirable, Team New Zealand engineer says

A lot has been made of Emirates Team New Zealand’s ability to foil upwind. Giovanni Belgrano, the team’s principle structural engineer, told the Sailing Anarchy website that foiling upwind isn’t important. In fact, he said, it’s not necessarily desirable.

Team New Zealand, meanwhile, will soon reach a speed 3 1/2 times true wind speed in practice, he said. That’s an awesome speed.

Belgrano said sometimes the foiling upwind is stable and sometimes it’s not. Because of the narrowness of the course, it might be counterproductive, he said. As Sailing Anarchy puts it, “you can’t point as high and that boat will slide severely sideways. … Any gain you have in speed while foiling upwind is negated by causing you to possibly go out of bounds. And so as to not go out of bounds, you’ll have to tack more often which will slow you down.”

Said Belgrano, “If there was no out of bounds, we would certainly be foiling upwind.”